The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in India, C. 1500-1900

Sreenivasan, Ramya

ISBN 10: 0295987324 / ISBN 13: 9780295987323

Published by University of Washington Press, 2007

About this Item

Brand new. Pristine, unmarked. With 4 maps. // Shipped carefully packed in a sturdy box. Winner of the 2009 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize, sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies. This book will interest historians of memory, gender, community, culture, and historywriting in South Asia.

Seller Inventory # 016019

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in India, C. 1500-1900
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295987324
• ISBN 13: 9780295987323
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Dimensions: 6.4W x 0.9H x 9.1D inches 6.4 inches width by 0.9 inches height by 9.1 inches depth
• Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Seller catalogs:
  • Railroads

About this title

Synopsis

Winner of the 2009 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize, sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies

The medieval Rajput queen Padmini - believed to have been pursued by Alauddin Khalji, the Sultan of Delhi - has been the focus of numerous South Asian narratives, ranging from a Sufi mystical romance in the sixteenth century to nationalist histories in the late nineteenth century. The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen explores how early modern regional elites, caste groups, and mystical and monastic communities shaped their distinctive versions of the past through the repeated refashioning of the legend of Padmini.

Ramya Sreenivasan investigates these legends and traces their subsequent appropriation by colonial administrators and nationalist intellectuals, for varying different political ends. Using Padmini as a means of illustrating the power of gender norms in constructing heroic memory, she shows how such narratives about virtuous women changed as they circulated across particular communities in South Asia between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This book will interest historians of memory, gender, community, culture, and historywriting in South Asia. Illustrating how enduring legends emerged out of particular precolonial repositories of "tradition," the book also addresses the nature of colonial transitions and precolonial historical consciousness.

About the Author

Ramya Sreenivasan is assistant professor of history at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York.